First of all, I’m please to announce the winners of the grand prize packs for Rising Phoenix:

Ailsa G. of Connecticut, USA

Jack R. of Washington, USA

Jeremy J. of California, USA

Again, thank you everyone who has contributed, and major congrats to the raffle winners.

More significantly, though, is that two years ago to this day, Beyond Victoriana was born over on Dreamwidth. The website has changed a lot since then, and, feeling reflective, I’d like to go over the progress, changes, and challenges the blogs has gone though in the past year after the jump.

In addition, to celebrate our 2nd anniversary, I’ll be giving away a few prizes in the coming weeks. The first is a pair of SteamPug posters, courtesy of Dr. Grymm Laboratories and two metals from Thee-Gartisan Works. A poster and a medal each will be given away to two lucky readers. The rules to enter will be listed at the end of this post too.

A lot of personal life changes occurred that wouldn’t have happened without this blog. I quit one job and gained another at Tor.com. I entered graduate school at New York University’s Performance Studies program. I got to travel the country talking at steampunk & social justice issues at various conventions. All of these experiences led to meeting some fantastic people in the steampunk and SF/F communities and solidifying friendships both online and off. It’s been a struggle trying to balance updating this blog while also juggling all of these other commitments, and so I thank readers for their patience for missed updates, typos, or delayed email responses (especially to interested potential contributors — I always try to get back to you guys before RL gets in the way…. ^_^;;)

I also know that this blog can constantly use more improvements, though. Before starting grad school in June, I had dedicated 20-hours a week to various BV related things (all unpaid too). Because of time constraints, I’ve had to change the posting schedule (boo), but I also took the opportunity to do outreach to more guest bloggers (yay). Working for Tor.com has been another great resource in both expanding my involvement in the steampunk community in different ways. While there has been some cross-posting here from Tor, I’ve tried only to link back to the most relevant articles to BV’s mission, and hope that shows.

Beyond Victoriana’s mission has expanded a bit to feature other marginalized identities. There has been featured and cross-posted articles about disability in steampunk, GLBT, and politics too, for example, as I’m aiming for Beyond Victoriana‘s platform to become a more open. New contributors are always needed, but I am particularly looking for specialist historians, book reviewers, and other steampunk bloggers. Minorities and women, of course, have been a majority of our guest bloggers and I encourage them to apply.

Moreover, thank you to the many, many fine people who have supported this blog in the past year. Beyond Victoriana has gained a lot of recognition, and it wouldn’t have happened without some great friends of the blog.

To Jaymee Goh, who was the first person I talked to about Beyond Victoriana and had supported it since the first post.

To Jeff and Ann Vandermeer and SJ Chambers, who gave the blog greater recognition in the science fiction community and for featuring the blog in The Steampunk Bible.

To Kevin Steil & the staff at SteamCon for nominating Beyond Victoriana this year for an Airship Award (we didn’t win, but it was a great nod nonetheless. And congrats to Jordan Block of Sepiachord, who totally deserves it).

To Jake von Slatt, for helping out the blog in too many ways to list here.

To Liz Gorinsky and Irene Gallo, my colleagues at Tor.com, for supporting my community outreach with the curator position for this year’s Steampunk Week.

Thanks for sharing the story of Beyond Victoriana – It motivates the rest of the aspiring writers and creatives in the Steampunk community. We’ve shared your link with our Twitter & Facebook companions!

Definitely, Happy second blogiversary! I only recently found this blog, and I haven’t had time to really explore the archives, etc., yet, and I’ve kind of been wondering whether it’s worth my time…and this post was very effective in alerting me that yes indeed, it is worth the time. I had no idea of the scope of your efforts. I am going to apply myself to a systematic exploration of everything on here! Thanks for all your hard work!

About Beyond Victoriana

The Nutshell ExplanationBeyond Victoriana is the oldest-running blog about multicultural steampunk and retro-futurism--that is, steampunk outside of a Western-dominant, Eurocentric framework. Founded in 2009, Beyond Victoriana focuses on non-Western cultures, underrepresented minorities in Western histories (Asian / Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, First Nation, Hispanic, black / African & other marginalized identities), and the cultural intersection between the West and the non-West.